Half a world away
by slythadri
Summary: EWE. Hermione almost missed the train out of the desert, but a stranger pulled her in. someone she did not expect to see ever again. Trigger warning: this story contains mentions of suicide and is also rated M for language and sexual situations. Oneshot. Dramione.


AN. trigger warning: this story contains mentions of suicide and is also rated M for language and sexual situations.

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"_The train for Adelaide is departing now. Please refrain from attempting boarding."_

"Shit! Wait! Please!" yelped Hermione Granger, who was running to catch the train that would take her from her field research site back to the urban side of Australia. She made it to the door but the train was already moving so she wouldn't be allowed on it, conductors were adamant on not letting people just jump in at the last minute. She was going to get stuck in the Red Centre desert for another week and she had promised her mom to get back in time for her dad's birthday. The place was too far for apparition and she didn't have a portkey. At that moment she saw a hand coming out the door and she grabbed it and let herself be pulled in. The locals would occasionally break the rules because not many trains stopped at this particular station.

"Thank you!" She said enthusiastically and looked up to see the face of her accomplice in this infraction. What she saw made her freeze.

"Draco," she said in a whisper, a cold chill running down her spine. The man tried to turn and walk away but she held him by his shirt with a hard pull. "You are alive! You are here!" He looked down at her wide, surprised eyes and felt a surge of shame and guilt fill him.

Five years ago Draco Malfoy had faked his death. He just wanted to disappear. His father was in Azkaban, his mother was in exile and he had been released on probation on the condition of going back to Hogwarts to complete his education under supervision, but at the end of the summer, before he could go back he had been brutally attacked. After the trials, alone, desperate and lost, he took on to the bottle. One drunken night, walking down Knockturn Alley he had been petrified, then beaten unconscious by cloaked people. After he was released from St Mungo's he locked himself in the Manor and wandered the hallways as if he was already a ghost. Looking through his father's potion cabinet he found a vial of Draught of living death. Holding it in his hand he called his personal elf.

"Pooky, I command you to report my death and prepare my funeral and do not bother questioning me. Go, now. " Then he lied on his bed and drank the potion and before losing consciousness he vanished that vial and held another one with poison in his hand.

He woke up hours later, locked in a coffin. It had been a terrifying moment but he kept his wits long enough to disapparate from it. He transported himself to a forest close to the manor, and after checking that no one was in there besides the elves, he took all the gold he could find, made the elves swear to silence and disappeared for good. He had moved to the other side of the world, hoping to escape from his past. But the past would always hunt you, and here it was, looking him in the face. He tried to jerk himself free but she held tight and pleaded

"Please. I need this. Please talk to me. Just for a few minutes. When you died… it felt like the war was never gonna end. Please. I need to know that it is really over. I need to know that it is really you and that you have found your place here"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "One drink. Bar car."

She nodded and followed him to the bar car. He ordered two whiskeys and offered one to her. She grabbed the glass and downed it in one gulp. He lifted his glass in a cheer and downed it too, then order another round. When the bartender poured them he put a handful of big bills on the bar and told the bartender "I think we need this," grabbing the bottle. Then to Hermione "come on. My sleeper car is this way."

She felt a huge relief that they would have privacy for this talk. She was probably going to lose her composure and it will not be pretty. She was hardly hanging by a thread as it was and once the flood doors opened she would be a mess.

He opened the door of his sleeper and motioned for her to go in. The private compartment was not set for the night yet, so it was currently looking quite similar to the compartments of the Hogwarts Express. It was almost poetic that this would be the background for this conversation.

She took a seat and when he sat across from her she took a deep breath and started before he could shut her down

"When word of your death got out, it felt like the atrocities would never end. I knew you had been attacked and that was unfair; the months after the war was still tumultuous times, some people were acting out their anger and sense of loss on the backs of kids like you, blamed for the sins of their parents, easy prey. It was like evil had not vanished, just changed hands. When they found your body... that was just too much. To me, it felt like the world was broken beyond repair. If there was no compassion for those who had been left without a choice, then why did we even bothered to try and save our world. Why sacrifice so much just to leave in a different kind of discrimination and resentment."

He felt his eyes pool with tears. When he faked his death he thought no one would miss him, and some people would even celebrate. And most would be indifferent. This, he had not expected. A few years ago he would have hated her for this. But he had now years of professional experience, and he now understood his past self enough to know better.

"Thank you, Hermione, for your words. And I am deeply sorry, for everything that transpired between us, but also for causing you that last gust of pain. I can assure you, I know better now. But back then, I did what I needed to do, on impulse, yes, but I was in survival mode."

She slouched back in the chair, tears falling down her cheeks. The summer after the war had been so difficult, waking up every day and having to remember that many were not with her anymore. The sadness was unbearable. She had improved slowly over the months but then right when she was preparing to go back to Hogwarts for her final year, the news of Draco Malfoy's suicide pushed her back into the abyss. Rita Skeeter, who never missed an opportunity for sensationalism, wrote a macabre piece describing the scene of the fallen prince lying in his bed, the vial of poison in his hand like some twisted romantic hero. Hermione regretted immensely reading that piece, the image haunted her through her year at Hogwarts. She would dream of herself walking into the elegant room, where he was lying on the bed, and she would call his name and shake him until he would take a breath and open his eyes. Then she would wake up and the knowledge that he was not to awaken would hit her again. She had by then made peace with all the other deaths, seen the bodies, attended funerals, grieved, and those felt real and definitive. But this one kept taunting her, her dreams hindering her ability to get closure. The dreams only stopped when she moved to Australia to find her parents and restore their memories, a task that took months of research and that was followed by the difficult process of reconciliation between them.

By now he had moved to sit beside her and tentatively put a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him and broke into sobs. He moved closer and held her patiently, waiting for her to calm down. She didn't have it in her to explain everything that was going through her head, but he didn't seem to need her to and also didn't seem uncomfortable. His demeanor was calm, mature, almost clinical. She composed herself a bit, and to feel a bit better next to his surprising equilibrium she conjured a mirror from her little bag and performed a makeup charm to look a bit more put together. Then she turned toward him again and offered

"You seem quite calm. I thought my reaction was going to make you run for the hills."

He shrugged. "I'm used to it. Is part of the job."

"Job? As in work? For a living? What do you do? I guess I assumed you don't need money but do you work?"

He laughed at her inelegant ramble. "Yes, Granger I do work. I'm a school counselor. In a muggle school."

She blinked several times, unable to come up with an appropriate comment

"What?" he added, still grinning at her confusion, "a former bully is the best person to tell kids why they shouldn't behave like that and to teach them how to process the feelings that cause them to act out. Besides, I do have a degree in psychology, in case you were wondering. I attended the University of Sydney.

She kept blinking and gaping, causing him to chuckle

"Hard to believe I imagine? Draco Malfoy, living amongst muggles, working for a living, telling kids to behave with empathy and compassion?"

She nodded

"It's like you are Bizarro Draco or something…"

"Like Bizarro Superman?" He said laughing

"Yeah but the opposite. And how do you know Bizarro?"

"I work with muggle kids, Granger. Extensive knowledge of comics and pop culture is paramount for my survival. And it makes my job much easier."

"Wow."

"Drink?" he said, retrieving the bottle

"Please," she said, looking at him like he was an alien wearing a Draco Malfoy suit.

Now versed in how to start a conversation with someone that doesn't know what to say, Draco proceeded to tell her about his job, his years at University and living among muggles, all while keeping the drinks coming. For once in her life, Hermione Granger was at a loss for words.

"Let me get this straight," she said after about an hour of him telling stories and her only interrupting to ask sporadic questions. "You are now kind and polite every single day of your life. No exceptions."

"I think the drinks are getting to you, Granger, you are losing your filter. But yes, in a nutshell, these days I'm rarely rude, especially to the kids."

"Rarely?" she teased

"Only a couple of times needed to go back to the old Malfoy ways."

"Do tell," she prompted. To her surprise, he blushed.

"During my first few months at the school, a group of girls started acting out just to get themselves in counseling. They tried to...insinuate themselves to me. Apparently, they had a bet going on who was gonna make me break the rule about fraternizing with students. After deflecting one too many of their attempts with politeness I realized there was nothing wrong with these girls, they just needed to be put in their place. So I did," he rushed to finish and sipped his drink to hide his embarrassment.

Hermione laughed, now euphoric from the combination of alcohol and the feeling of getting a person that she thought lost back into her life. And the person that had come back was vastly improved, and honestly, that was a great look on him. Draco Malfoy had always been objectively handsome but his assholeness had always eclipsed his beauty. Now, with this personality makeover, she could see what the schoolgirls were all raging about.

"I can imagine it now," and she proceeded to make her voice pitch high and bat her eyelashes: "oh, Mr. Malfoy, I'm in pain, so much pain, my pain is here, see?" she said, hovering her hand suggestively over her breasts, "here in my heart, my little heart is broken, please, help me Mr. Malfoy"

He blushed even darker "stop it, Granger," he said with a bit of a grin. It didn't help that she was wearing a tank top with spaghetti straps and her tits looked delectable in it

"Oh Mr. Malfoy, please, can you see all this pain?" she said, now kneeling on the seat, pretending to crawl toward him

He laughed, half nervously and half aroused, his eyes now glued to her chest "I mean it Granger, stop it. If you are not gonna put your money where your mouth is, then sit back like a good girl."

Hermione took on his challenge head-on, fueled by the mix of whiskey and spilled emotions. She climbed on his lap and straddle him

"Please, Mr. Malfoy, I need you, please."

He grabbed her ass firmly and pulled her tighter onto him, then growled in her ear

"Last warning, Granger. Don't offer what you are not going to give."

She leaned her head back and he hovered his teeth over her skin, giving hollow bites down the side of her neck and back up until he reached her mouth and sank his tongue in it. The next thirty minutes were a blur. Draco transformed the seat into the sleeping position and Hermione had half a mind to silence the compartment right before the feeling of Draco Malfoy's hands pulling down the tank top and latching his mouth onto her breasts made her gasp loudly, but that sound was nothing compared to the moans that escaped her when he vanished all of her clothes, throw her on the bed and buried his face between her legs. It had been a long time since either of then have had sex and they didn't stop to think how or why this was happening. They were on a train, in the middle of the Australian desert, in a place where they didn't belong to anyone or anything. The past was half a world away. The future could be anything. And the present was made of wet kisses, sweaty skin, salty licks, wet thighs, rolling hips, curled toes, pleas for more, of passion, pleasure, rapture, and the need to forget anything that existed outside of the sleeper compartment.

Sometime later, two former enemies were lying side by side, her on her back, rubbing the back of her knuckles on his chest, him on his side, tracing patterns with his fingers over her skin.

"What happens now?" she asked.

He smiled

"We have another 36 hours on this train to get to know each other. But I think we are up to a great start," he said and leaned in to kiss her again.

"Is that your professional opinion?" she sid into his mouth.

"Absolutely."


End file.
